The Gorillaz story is now something of a legend. The tale of a world-storming band born out of the sick mind of foul-smelling bass-player and ego-driven mastermind Murdoc Niccals. Undeniably, the four Gorillaz - Murdoc, singer 2D, drummer Russel Hobbs and the diminuitive Japanese guitarist Noodle - have changed the face of music and beyond, forever. An incredibly creative blend of music, animation, technology, wit and humour, Gorillaz re-invented the possibilities of entertainment with every release.

This approach has made Gorillaz a global phenomenon, having sold in excess of 15 million records worldwide to date. They've won awards from Grammys to Webbys to MTV awards and more, for practically every aspect of their operation.

By rattling the cages of the music industry so fiercely, the fearless nature of Gorillaz' experiments illuminated the way forward for all, pioneering techniques and redefining the cultural landscape along the way.

In 2001, Gorillaz burst out of every TV and radio with their seminal hit 'Clint Eastwood' and then unleashed a fantastic collision of dub, reggae, hip hop, punk and Cuban music, in the form of their debut album. They thrilled us and wowed us with their jaw-dropping visuals and wicked sense of adventure. They brought a fresh, original and vital voice, breathing new life into tired formats, and left a rich, colourful legacy in their wake to inspire a whole new generation of artists to come.

In 2005 with Demon Days, their second album, the fantastic foursome again blazed across our consciousness with a magnificent piece of work that somehow managed to surpass even the outstanding achievements made by their first record. Both musically and visually Gorillaz had reached further and deeper. The all-embracing attitude of Gorillaz provided a limitless canvass for a whole cast of talents, old and new, allowing each of them to express themselves in a unique, exciting way. Along with the album, another landslide

Five years on from the release of Demon Days, Murdoc Niccals and co. are back. The band have taken up residence on an island deep in the South Pacific, made up of the detritus, debris and washed up remnants of humanity. This Plastic Beach is the furthest point from any landmass on Earth; the most deserted spot on the planet.

"The whole thing works beautifully, more with each listen.George Booker, NoRipcord.com"It displays a sonic ambition, an openmindedness and a melodic gift that puts so much modern pop to shame.Uncut.com

Gorillaz began as a lark but turned serious once it became Damon Albarn's primary creative outlet following the slow dissolve of Blur. Delivered five years after the delicate whimsical melancholy of 2005's Demon Days, Plastic Beach is an explicit sequel to its predecessor, its story line roughly picking up in the dystopian future where the last album left off, its music offering a grand, big-budget expansion of Demon Days, spinning off its cameo-crammed blueprint. Traces of Albarn's Monkey opera can be heard, particularly in the hypnotic Mideastern pulse of "White Flag," but Damon's painstaking pancultural pop junk-mining no longer surprises -- when hip-hop juts up against Brit-pop, it's expected -- yet it still has the capacity to delight no matter which direction the Gorillaz may swing. Lou Reed's crotchety croak on "Some Kind of Nature" has the same kind of gravitational pull as Mos Def leading the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble through the intensely circling "Sweepstakes," while the group reaches new heights of sparkling pop on "Superfast Jellyfish," aided by the return of De La Soul -- the rappers who propelled "Feel Good Inc." -- and an appearance from Gruff Rhys, the Super Furry Animals frontman who is an ideal fit for Gorillaz (possibly because SFA's genre-bending pop and Pete Fowler artwork clearly paved the way for Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's collaboration). A common thread among all these tracks is that they find Albarn ceding the spotlight to his fellow musicians, preferring to be the puppetmaster behind the curtain, and Plastic Beach works best when he's the composer and producer, finding hidden strengths within his guests -- having Mick Jones and Paul Simonon for the elastic title track, coaxing some powerful performances out of Bobby Womack -- but often when Albarn takes center stage his laconic drawl lets the air out of the balloon. Curiously, much of this arrives toward the beginning of the album, the record gaining momentum as it unspools, working toward its climax, but the overall album accentuates moody texture over pop hooks. This emphasis means Plastic Beach is the first Gorillaz album to play like a soundtrack to a cartoon -- which isn't entirely a bad thing, because as Albarn grows as a composer, he's a master of subtly shifting moods and intricately threaded allusions, often creating richly detailed collages that are miniature marvels. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Compilation Appearances

Associated Artists and Works

Technical Info

Release Date : 03/09/2010

Original Release Date : 2010

Catalog ID : 27547

Label : EMI

Number of Discs : 1

Studio/Live : Studio

Mono/Stereo : Stereo

SPAR Code : n/a

UPC : 50999627547294

Professional Reviews

Rolling Stone (pp.61-62) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "PLASTIC BEACH, Gorillaz's third excellent album in a row, is all Albarn -- he writes the tunes, produces, sings, plays most of the music and gets people on the phone for left-field cameos..."

Slant Magazine 10 of 10It's been 12 years since Blur songster and Britpop poster boy Damon Albarn first sat down with comic book artist Jamie Hewlett to draft their response to the decaying state of the music industry, and yet there's never been a time where the message of their avant-garde virtual band was quite so pertinent. These days our stars are force-fed to us by Simon Cowell and reality television, our chart-topping singles merely cover versions of songs that were cutting edge decades ago, and the entire concept of "pop music" is relegated to fodder for our celebrity voyeurism: penned by the talented, performed by the beautiful. This could be why the illusory members of Gorillaz have emigrated to this plastic beach, a far-flung island formed entirely of consumer waste and detritus, which Albarn has gathered and tailored to form what could well be his magnum opus...Ironically, after a sweeping orchestral introduction, we're welcomed to Plastic Beach by Snoop Dogg, the G-funk crooner who swapped his hip-hop credibility for a banal MTV reality show to cement his celebrity status. But despite hamfisted references to Planet of the Apes and "drinking lemonade in the shade getting blazed," it isn't without its charms. Albarn fashions a beat of ill-omened synthesizers and sonorous bass glides upon which the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble impose their platoon of trumpets and trombones. The horns make way for elaborate string arrangements and jubilant flute work on the serene preamble to "White Flag," paving the way for U.K. rappers Kano and Bashy to wax lyrical on war, crime, and religion atop spells of electronic grime. This m?lange of white-collar instruments and blue-collar beats in the album's early stages yields exceptional results, foreshadowing the unpredictable nature of the record and emphatically justifying Albarn's exodus from his "Country House" to this Plastic Beach...To handpick highlights from Plastic Beach should be considered lofty praise indeed; this is an album where the mind-boggling and the mind-blowing are wall to wall. Its brilliance adopts many guises throughout its 16 tracks, taking the form of unruffled cool one minute and raucous thumpers the next, all somehow woven together seamlessly to fit this outlandish adventure. Though it's only to be considered "pop" in the most obscure sense, and it goes to show Albarn has a pretty warped concept of the term, Plastic Beach provides the almighty shakeup that pop music has needed for some time. - Huw Jones

Bio

"Gorillaz

The Gorillaz story is now something of a legend. The tale of a world-storming band born out of the sick mind of foul-smelling bass-player and ego-driven mastermind Murdoc Niccals. Undeniably, the four Gorillaz - Murdoc, singer 2D, drummer Russel Hobbs and the diminuitive Japanese guitarist Noodle - have changed the face of music and beyond, forever. An incredibly creative blend of music, animation, technology, wit and humour, Gorillaz re-invented the possibilities of entertainment with every release.

This approach has made Gorillaz a global phenomenon, having sold in excess of 15 million records worldwide to date. They've won awards from Grammys to Webbys to MTV awards and more, for practically every aspect of their operation.

By rattling the cages of the music industry so fiercely, the fearless nature of Gorillaz' experiments illuminated the way forward for all, pioneering techniques and redefining the cultural landscape along the way.

In 2001, Gorillaz burst out of every TV and radio with their seminal hit 'Clint Eastwood' and then unleashed a fantastic collision of dub, reggae, hip hop, punk and Cuban music, in the form of their debut album. They thrilled us and wowed us with their jaw-dropping visuals and wicked sense of adventure. They brought a fresh, original and vital voice, breathing new life into tired formats, and left a rich, colourful legacy in their wake to inspire a whole new generation of artists to come.

In 2005 with Demon Days, their second album, the fantastic foursome again blazed across our consciousness with a magnificent piece of work that somehow managed to surpass even the outstanding achievements made by their first record. Both musically and visually Gorillaz had reached further and deeper. The all-embracing attitude of Gorillaz provided a limitless canvass for a whole cast of talents, old and new, allowing each of them to express themselves in a unique, exciting way. Along with the album, another landslide of breathtaking videos, and some magical, moving live performances, Gorillaz gave the world something that had never been seen before - and an enchanting and invigorating sense that the impossible is perfectly possible.

By truly uniting an astounding array of influences under one roof, they've displayed exactly what can be achieved when intelligence, understanding and creativity come together for the greater good.

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